Tracking and reporting aircraft flights and anomalies therein is extremely important in the aircraft industry, whether for commercial airlines, or specialized applications such as helicopter logging and firefighting. In the earlier days, flight data recorders were used to determine what went wrong in a flight after the fact. Beacons were used to locate a downed aircraft.
There are a large number of functions that are desirable to have in an aircraft data recording and reporting system. These include capturing occurrences that take place during flight using Air Data and Attitude Heading and Reference Systems (ADHRS), Quick Access Recorder (QAR) and Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and FSM heuristics monitoring. Because of the large number of functions, there are a relatively large number of components in the system that must communicate effectively with one another. These require space, and must be coordinated with one another.
Accessing the data has also provided challenges. Generally, a maintenance person would manually download the FDR data from the aircraft using a QAR. Then manually transfer the memory media to an observation and analysis station.
Later, as it became apparent that more data could be available and would be of value, data were transmitted from the aircraft after it landed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,181,990 discloses an aircraft data transmission system used with an aircraft having a data acquisition unit. The system includes a communications unit located in the aircraft and in communication with the data acquisition unit. The system also includes a cellular infrastructure in communication with the data communications unit after the aircraft has landed. The system further includes a data reception unit in communication with the cellular infrastructure.
More recently, aircraft tracking methods and systems have been developed. For example, US Patent Application 20040204801 discloses a safety and security system. The system includes an aircraft subsystem, a ground subsystem in communication with the aircraft subsystem via a wireless communication link, and an external system in communication with the ground subsystem via a second communication link. The aircraft subsystem includes a comparator module for comparing flight data with expected data, and a triggering module for triggering transmission of selected data when the flight data deviate from the expected data. The ground subsystem includes an analyzer module for analyzing the selected data transmitted from the aircraft. One of the ground subsystem and the external system includes a correlation module for correlating the selected data transmitted from the aircraft with information accessible by the external system. This approach is limited by the communication links that it uses.
In order to fully exploit the communication links that are currently available, the Internet Protocol (IP) address that will be assigned either needs to be known, or the requirement to know the IP address needs to be removed. Unfortunately, when mobile devices connect to or create a hotspot with an indeterminate IP address, addresses in the 192.168.0 class C subnet are usually used, but there is no documentation that confirms that is the only subnet it will use. Even if the subnet is known, the IP address dynamically assigned to the mobile device will not be known. Similarly, when a flight data recording and reporting unit connects, the IP address will not be known beforehand. Knowing what IP address will be assigned to the mobile base station ahead of time simply has not been feasible. Hence there is a need to be able to find a service on a network by service name without the client having to know the IP address or port number in advance.
A system for transferring data from flight data recording and reporting units is required that provides for auto-discovery and auto-connect between the flight data recording and reporting units and base stations, flight data monitoring storage and analysis units and the like. Preferably, the communications are bi-directional, allowing for reporting back to the aircraft or to remote locations. Autonomous reporting would reduce the reliance on human intervention.